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VC10 - The Full Story of the VC10, Super VC10 and RAF VC10 - John McCrickard A review of the new VC10 book from John McCrickard that was released in June 2025. This may be the ultimate reference book for the VC10 enthusiast.
The latest VC10 book, published by Air-Britain and penned by John McCrickard, has been out since early June of this year. John kindly invited me over to his place to pick up my copy of this book and through some vagaries of calendar management (mostly on my side) we arranged this for 29th June which surely is a very apt date to do anything VC10 related. John is a long-time VC10 enthusiast but has also worked with the type in a professional capacity as an aircraft engineering project manager. Through this job, he spent 12 years dealing with RAF VC10 modifications, updates and other projects. This book is the culmination of nearly 50 years of research, as a side-line next to an enduring love-affair with the type, and has seen John digging through various archives and files as well as visiting the VC10's 50th 'do' at Brooklands Museum in 2012. The work gathered pace when Air-Britain commissioned the title and this resulted in a completed manuscript four years ago. Unfortunately, processing queues and other things slowed down the pace from that point on and the planned publication date kept slipping to the right. John took advantage of this by updating the text to reflect the 2025 situation, not wanting to release a book that would be four years out of date on the day of publication. Once the delays had been overcome, the book went to the printers and this culminated in the June 2025 publication of 'Vickers VC10 - The Full Story of the VC10, Super VC10 and RAF VC10'.
The work that was put into this, mostly by John but also by Air-Britain, has paid off. Confronted with the finished article, you hold a heavy tome (more than 1.5 kg) with a crisp, glossy cover that shows the VC10 head on. This mirrors the book's approach to the story: it provides you with the straight facts, with the complete details, with the full story as advertised on the spine. The 300 pages are printed on good quality glossy stock that brings out the best of the many colour and black and white photos and drawings. This is not a coffee table book with full page colour shots though. I am hard pressed to find a photo that is printed at a size of more than a third of a page, as the text takes up a very significant chunk of this book. It is lavishly illustrated though, with familiar and less familiar photos showing every aspect of the type. The drawings also provide a very complete look at the built and unbuilt variants, with original drawings having been reproduced (some not having been published before) and new line drawings and side profiles having been commissioned from artist Mike Zoeller, in addition to several Chris Gibson drawings. Other illustrations in the form of reproduced brochures and things like covers from timetables and menus serve to add colour to the pages and illustrate the various advertising campaigns and period publications.
Over the course of 14 chapters, John lays out the full story with a lot, I will say it again, a lot of details thrown in. This really is the most comprehensive account of the type's 51-year career that can possibly be to put to paper. It covers the V.1000/VC7 that was still-born, the development of the type from a Vanguard-derivative to the clean-sheet design that emerged. The different variants are described, with a later chapter covering all the proposed developments both for the civil market and the military uses. There is an extensive technical description that also covers the engines that powered the type. The author has chosen to include the RB211 here, as the Rolls-Royce test bed used one of these for a while. The individual aircraft histories in chapter 14 are the most detailed yet produced. The writing style is factual, but not so much that it makes you forget about the story and the associated ups and downs. In true Air-Britain style, this volume covers every little detail that you would want to know about, from liveries to type designations, from production line numbers to airline advertising slogans and nicknames. It is perhaps lighter on the technical details than other publications, but it is very hard to point to anything that could be added. There are also nine appendices adding a lot of additional facts to pore over. This is not a book to devour in one sitting, as that would amount to a reading session that goes beyond what a human body can deliver without sustenance. It is a book to be read in various sittings, dipping back in for more and more sides to the story, looking up snippets of information and going through all the illustrations. If ever a VC10 pub quiz or game show is devised, this tome will surely be the one and only reference that needs to be present on the judges' table. It will conclusively and authoritatively provide an answer to any question and its ruling is final.
Where to place this book within the (by now) long list of VC10 related publications? We can go and compare it to other publications from Martin Hedley, Scott Henderson, Lance Cole and Keith Wilson and it will beat all of these for completeness, if only for the fact that it is one of the few publications to have been published after the type's retirement, covering all the details of its later service life and the initial years in retirement. It will compete with some of these on illustrations, covering a lot of ground here but perhaps lacking the large number and large format of photos from some other books. It does not contain all of the technical and operational details that are in Keith Wilson's Haynes Manual, but that is a particular style of books that John never tried to emulate. Each of the books published so far has its own context and was, in some cases, limited by the situation at the time of publishing. John Mc Crickard's addition to the collection blends much of the previously available information with that from newly unearthed documents and a holistic look that is possible now that we are 12 years past the type's retirement date. Knowing the VC10's story intimately by now, I was struck at times by the idea that a small anecdote or two would not have been out of place to break the monotony of facts, but that does not mean that these have all been left out. It was mainly during the descriptions of airlines backgrounds and the minutiae of their use of the VC10 that I recalled some additional snippets that could have added more colour to the story. I do know that the original manuscript has been very much larger, so choices had to be made to keep the book within manageable size and price constraints. Various recollections by military personnel provide an insight into the wide-ranging uses that the aircraft had been put to and how the crew enjoyed operating the type. If you are a VC10 enthusiast, this book needs to be on your bookshelf. I am proud to have a signed copy on mine.
With thanks to Lance Cole. |
